J-S Letter: Scott Reeder has an agenda that ignores the facts

Scott Reeder's column of Dec. 20, “Numbers show how bad Illinois is for business,” is a good example of why one should read him with a good deal of skepticism.

Comment

By Special to The Journal-Standard

Journal Standard

By Special to The Journal-Standard

Posted Dec. 26, 2013 at 12:00 PM

By Special to The Journal-Standard

Posted Dec. 26, 2013 at 12:00 PM

Scott Reeder's column of Dec. 20, "Numbers show how bad Illinois is for business," is a good example of why one should read him with a good deal of skepticism. For instance, he compares what he states is Illinois' average worker's compensation rate of $2.81 per $100 of payroll with Florida's, which he states is $1.84, thus drawing the conclusion that Illinois is uncompetitive and unfriendly for business.

Mr. Reeder does not take into consideration the relative benefit levels between the states which are influenced by the cost of living, the cost of medical care and what each state sees as an adequate level of support for the injured worker, nor does he deal with the fact that Illinois, by virtue of being a more highly industrialized state than Florida, has a greater number of severe industrial accidents which cost more to deal with. In short, Mr. Reeder is not comparing apples to apples.

Mr. Reeder's article is also inconsistent in that he states that "… small businesses are the major job generators in the economy." Later he states that "According to a 2013 Bradley University/University of Tennessee study, 25 percent of small businesses fail in their first year, and that 73 percent go under within a decade." So we have to face the fact that small business employment is often of a short term nature, often paying minimum wages and often without benefits of any kind. Finally, it should be pointed out that many small businesses are marginal one-person businesses that make little consistent difference in the overall national employment picture.

In short, one might draw the conclusion that Mr. Reeder has an agenda in which carefully-used facts have become irrelevant.